


my soul still trembling

by mollivanders



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Universe, F/M, Gen, Parallel Universes, because reboots! force generated reboots!, character death but it doesn't stick, or parallel universes who knows it's scifi, sort of time travel with the force, sort of universe rebooting until they get it right
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-10 14:33:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15951326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollivanders/pseuds/mollivanders
Summary: Cassian is holding her tightly, or she's holding him tightly. She’s not sure anymore where one of them ends and the other starts; at this moment it doesn’t matter one microt.Instead, she holds Cassian a little more tightly, counting the seconds they have left by heartbeats. She’s forgetting to breathe, caught in amber as his arms stretch a little tighter around her. His breaths are shallow, uneven, and she feels more than hears his exhale over the painful storm swallowing them whole.Soon, she thinks.It’ll be over soon.Her last choice – her last act – is to rest her cheek on his shoulder(welcome home)and then – then, there is only the Force, and a rush that pulls her back –(back to the start).





	my soul still trembling

**Author's Note:**

> This was meant to be a one-shot that has now taken over my laptop with a four chapter outline. Go figure. My initial idea was to look at different iterations of Jyn and Cassian and the events of the movie using different meeting points as the slice point across iterations (or parallel universes). In my canon, there is some bleedthrough across iterations - muscle memory and familiar steps - but free will is still fully functional. Not everything lines up the same, but the characters are still themselves, just faced with different choices along the way. Also, I'm squinting at the age difference and saying it's more like two years because it's my AU.
> 
> (This is also sort of my vague counterargument to soulmate theory where people always end up together no matter what universe they're in - but in my own way.)

_The Force_ , her mother tells her, _binds all living things together_.

She is very young, perhaps three years old, and she does not remember if they are in a spaceship or a camp or hidden away in Coruscant. All she remembers is her mother’s voice, drifting forbidden teachings across her memory.

 _Will the Force protect me?_ Jyn remembers asking, or maybe that’s a dream, and her solemn priestess mother shakes her head.

 _It will carry you,_ she says instead, _and it is always with you_.

She wants to say: she cannot see the Force, she cannot feel the Force, she does not understand.

(She is very small, and drifts off to sleep.)

+

Cassian is holding her tightly, or she's holding him tightly. She’s not sure anymore where one of them ends and the other starts; at this moment it doesn’t matter one microt.

Instead, she holds Cassian a little more tightly, counting the seconds they have left by heartbeats. She’s forgetting to breathe, caught in amber as his arms stretch a little tighter around her. His breaths are shallow, uneven, and she feels more than hears his exhale over the painful storm swallowing them whole.

 _Soon_ , she thinks. _It’ll be over soon._

Her last choice – her last act – is to rest her cheek on his shoulder

( _welcome home_ )

and then – then, there is only the Force, and a rush that pulls her back –

(back to the start).

+

She is ten years old, and still shorter than all the other children in Saw’s camp, and she has two wobbly teeth that are not quite ready to fall out.

She is ten years old, and Saw is showing her how to clean a blaster.

“You are not old enough to use this, Jyn,” he tells her in that comforting rumble that she associates with sanctuary. “You are too young,” he says, almost to himself, and gives her a sidelong glance she doesn’t understand. “But you can learn how it works.”

She spends the afternoon learning to take a blaster pistol apart and then put it back together. It’s an old, beat-up DL-44 and the power pack he gave her only puts out sparks, but it’s a start. She takes it apart, then puts it back together, then takes it apart again as Saw times her actions.

Later, he wraps a blindfold around her eyes and ties it snugly behind her bun.

“Do it again,” he says, and leaves her. The blindfold is punishingly dark; it blocks out every last ray of feeble light from the lanterns and though the material is soft, it creates a suffocating effect.

(Suffocating like the cave, after mama – after papa – )

Her hands fumble over the blaster, pulling it apart and trying to think past the pounding in her ears. _Switch off the power. Eject the power pack. Release the cooling module. Twist the nozzle free. Reassemble._ It takes her three times longer than ever before, her hands slipping from nerves and sweat, but she does it, and doesn’t show Saw how long it took her. Instead, she checks her work – and starts again.

(From then on, she always practices in the dark.)

+

“We’re going on a trip,” Saw says, appearing above her like a familiar ghoul. He’s the tallest man in the Onderon cell, and even if he wasn’t the oldest rebel, and trained by Anakin Skywalker himself, he would be an imposing figure. His injuries require him to wear more and more physical aids, and it’s not like the rebellion has access to much of quality. The other rebels give him a wide berth and almost mystical respect.

(To Jyn, he is another father.)

She is crouched on the floor, sorting reliable from less reliable fresh power packs for the upcoming raid. Her hands are covered in blaster grease, and he smiles when she wipes a hand across her forehead, leaving a shiny trail.

“To town?” she asks, scrambling up and half-heartedly wiping her palms on her pants. He’d never taken her into town before; never brought her on the raids or reconnaissance.

She’d gone on plenty of trips _outside_ of town, and maybe – just maybe – he’d finally changed his mind.

A half-smile flits around his eyes at her question and then quickly disappears, replaced by something sadder – older.

“Further than that,” he says, and gives her a pair of leather gloves. “These are yours.” She pulls them on, gratitude hovering on reverence. Gifts from Saw are rare; new supplies even rarer. The gloves are a little big but she closes them on the furthest notch and looks up at him, beaming.

“Don’t forget your pack,” he says, and disappears back from where he’d come, knowing she would follow.

The trip is not to town. The trip is in a spaceship, and as Onderon falls behind her in the view pane, Jyn idly thinks she might never see it again. It’s ridiculous of course; she is with Saw, and Saw would never leave Onderon.

“Where are we going?” she asks, climbing into the copilot’s seat and flexing her hands in her new gloves. He doesn’t answer right away, and with only minor complaint from the hyperdrive, they make the jump to hyperspace. “Is it far away?”

The quiet stretches out between them, but Jyn doesn’t mind. Saw looks worried, but he smiles when he finally looks back at her. Somehow, in that moment, he reminds her of her other father – her father who works for the Empire – and she pushes the betrayal and memory away just in time. She has no father. She has Saw.

“Quite far,” he says, and she smiles back at him. “Listen to me, Jyn,” he says, voice returning to his habitual seriousness. “We are going to meet with some…friends.” Something about the way he says _friends_ makes her wonder what he means, but then he adds, “so stay close, and listen carefully to all you hear.”

“But they’re friends?” she asks cautiously, confirming, and his mouth twists in a secretive way.

“Trust nobody, Jyn,” he says, “and you’ll be fine.”

(In another life – a different life – Saw sees the growing child soldier – and holds her closer. In this life – there is a moment where Saw looks at her, and he doesn’t see the child left by her parents. He only sees what he is making of her, and how the cause burns behind her eyes, and how the child is falling away.)

In this life – he leaves her all the same.

+

She manages to hide in the temple for over a week before they catch her. When she’d seen their ship take off without her – at first she’d thought it was a mistake. He wouldn’t leave her. He’d just forgotten, or he’d be back so fast he didn’t think she’d even notice he was gone.

Either way, she was going to follow his last instruction. _Trust nobody_. She gives the nursery droid the slip and disappears into the caverns of the Massassi Temple. She waits, and survives off the rations in her pack, and watches the skies for his return.

By the third day, with no message from Saw, she realizes: he’d sent her on an infiltration mission. He’d said to trust nobody, and he and some of the senators had gotten into a really big argument that had sent the cleaning droids skittering for the exits. He’d left her behind so she could learn more about the Alliance. She’s embarrassed it’s taken her this long to figure it out, but she takes to it with dedication, slipping between quarters and slicing into unguarded terminals with practiced ease.

(She’s almost offended nobody even _notices_.)

By the last day, her rations are gone and she’s fried from being on high alert for days on end, so when someone literally stumbles across her in the dark, it takes her longer than usual to snap awake. She jumps up, groggy, and stares into the face of an older kid who looks as surprised as she is. He’s taller than her, hair falling in his face, and she narrows her eyes.

“Jyn Erso?” he asks, and her whole body tenses. He knows her name. “We’ve been looking for you.”

“So?” she asks, biting out the single word and stifling a sleepy yawn. “I’m fine here.”

The look he gives her is appraising; knowing; but most of all, concealing. She recognizes every inch of it as just like her own.

“Come on,” he says, gesturing with his head down the hall. “You hungry?”

Saw’s voice echoes in the back of her mind. _Trust nobody,_ he’d said. The boy catches the look in her eyes and lowers her shoulders, making himself smaller. It would help, except that she’s lost and alone and – sometimes the only way through a trap is to spring it.

Fighting every instinct in her body, she follows the boy out of the shadows.

+

It’s another month before she realizes – actually believes – he’s not coming back.

(It’s not the same as acceptance.)

The children all share the same general quarters in one of the lower levels of the temple. There’s a cot, and a blanket, and it’s more than she’s had since mama – since – It brings the nightmares back in full force, waking in hateful tears and biting her tongue when she wants to show Saw that she’s not crying, she’s not scared, except _he’s not there_.

He left her, and mama left her, and papa –

(It’s a very bad month, and she buries it in worse sleep until she doesn’t dream.)

Between the nightmares and the homesickness , she slips away to slice into databases she’s not supposed to have access to – just in case it’s a mistake. Just in case he’s coming back.

(She doesn’t believe, anymore – but she still _hopes_.)

She gets away with it to, for several long weeks, before Cassian finally tracks her down and suggests she practice slicing Imperial files instead.

(This is how it starts.)

He’s barely fourteen, but the Rebellion is too desperate to overlook his skill at getting people to trust him; at slipping past patrols and fast-talking his way past guards. She’s surprised the first time he brings back a computer core that must weigh twice as much as her and even more surprised when he asks her to slice it instead of running it up the chain.

It’s as directly as he’ll say that she’s the only one he trusts to do it right, and do it fast.

(Her answer is as direct, and as quick, in the form of a rich mine of unlocked Imperial data).

When she’s thirteen, he brings her something different.

He’d been gone a long time, but there was more and more of that going around. There were also more of people not coming back too, so when she spots him climbing up the steps of the Massassi temple and waving at her, she grins and meets him halfway.

“You’re back,” she says, and tries not to stare. It looks like he hasn’t eaten in a week, or slept in a week either. He doesn’t look fifteen; he looks kriffing _lost_.

“I found something you might like,” he says in greeting, and when she looks at him, it’s hard not to smile again. He’s flushed, and bright-eyed, and burning with the cause, straight from his ship.

 _Alive_ , something in her soul sings, and she startles at the item he tips into her gloved palms. It’s a data chip bearing an Imperial marking. The casing has some scratch marks, but the core looks undamaged, and curiously whole.

“It’s a K-2SO model,” he says, sitting down and leaning back on his elbows. The giant blood orange shape of Yavin hangs over them like a canopy, comforting and still as she sits next to him, still examining the chip. “We got the chassis too. It’s in the ship; I wanted to see if you could fix it first.”

“Fix it?!” she yelps, staring. Perhaps the malnutrition had finally gotten to him.

“Slice it,” he amends, still looking up at the sky. “And then I could reprogram it to be…free.”

“How do you know I can slice Imperial code?” she asks, passing him the chip back. “Command has kept him on pretty low-level stuff since I started.”

“Boring, right?” he asks and she snorts in response.

“Your file says you can,” Cassian says quietly. “It says you did, at least once. Do you remember?”

Her heart forgets to beat for a moment until she drags in a ragged breath.

“Once,” she says quietly. “There’s a file?” If there’s a file – if it has that in it – if Saw _told_ them –

“He’s not coming back,” Cassian says gently, and it’s the softest she’s ever heard him speak. “But you can trust us. We’re the Rebellion.” He pauses, looking over at her. “You’ve been with us almost as long as him.”

“Saw said to trust nobody,” she bites back, and her fingernails scratch at the temple stone. “And he told me about the Rebellion. I’m not some stupid kid you can con.”

“If anybody shouldn’t be trusted here,” Cassian says, the frustration in his voice just kept at bay, “it’s probably the person who snuck around and stole rations and sliced into Alliance files when they first came here.” He shrugs, and the frustration slips away. “But I do. I trust you. And I think you’d be good at slicing this chip.”

“You trust me?” she asks, unable to keep the disbelief from her voice and his mouth twitches.

“If it helps, Erso,” he says, “you and I are among the few permanent residents at the base. Our age, anyway.”

She meets his gaze again, testing the bridge between them, an unsteady step over open wounds.

“Trust,” she says, forcing a shaky breath past her teeth as she holds her palm out, “goes both ways.”

His hand closes over hers, the chip between them, and he nods in affirmation.

(This is how it really starts.)

+

Andor and Erso. Erso and Andor.

Well, actually, more like _Willix and Thaven. Thaven and Willix._ or whatever quick covers Draven had scrapped together for them that week. As Head of Intelligence, he didn’t think it was ideal that they paired off so frequently, but he wouldn’t argue with results. Andor’s ability to fly under the radar combined with Erso’s instinct for brawling tended to work well.

The fact that the K-2 droid refused to work without both of them, and that Andor and Erso backed him up on this, made it that much harder to separate them. By the time Cassian made captain at nineteen, they’d handled over thirty missions without superior officers present.

(It helped that Cassian didn’t seem to care about anything but the cause, and Erso. It was best to keep those two things as closely linked as possible.)

The only person who ever managed to stay in their orbit was Leia Organa, and _that_ was a grenade Draven wanted to stay as far away as possible from.

+

 

“You’ll make captain soon,” Cassian tells her one night as they head to their spot at the top of the temple. She’s snuck extra rations from the kitchen, along with some Antilles wine Leia had left her on the last visit. It was hard to think about anything else with Cassian this close, and her eyes slide shut as he settles in next to her. He smelled of metallic soap and aftershave, and her pulse picks up as she inhales.

She doesn’t want to even think it, but he’s more than familiar.

(He’s something closer to home.)

“I don’t care about making captain,” she murmurs, listening to the sounds of the jungle below. “Just as long as they keep sending me out. I couldn’t stand being stuck here all the time again.”

“Jyn Erso,” he says, his tone dropping dramatically to match hers, “willing to die for the cause, and for the army.”

“Saw did say I was his best,” she says without thinking, and her eyes snap open as she stares straight ahead of her and not at Cassian.

(She doesn’t remember the last time she’d spoken of him. She doesn’t want to remember.)

Cassian’s response is as cautious and measured as in those early days. “When did he say that?” he asks, and she shakes her head, tossing rations his way.

“I don’t know,” she says, and she really doesn’t remember. It’s been too long.

“Well, it’s true,” Cassian says, casual but for his eyes on hers, “if I get any say in it.”

She’s forgetting to breathe again with him this close, with his eyes steady and trusting. He’s her only friend in the whole galaxy, and she’s going to be an idiot and fuck it up and if she’s going to fuck it up she may as well – and then his eyes fall to her lips – and she’s meeting him halfway in a confused fumble of limbs that don’t quite know where to go but then he’s actually kissing her, tentative and searching and waiting and well, whatever else is happening doesn’t matter anymore.

It doesn’t matter until he freezes on top of her, pulling away to drop his forehead against hers and his stare that close and intense nearly shorts her out all over again.

“Jyn,” he says, and literally nobody in her life has said her name the way he does, “are you – is this – ”

He trails off, looking at her mouth again before wrenching his eyes back up to hers. Somehow her hands have found their way to his hair and she doesn’t want to move for the galaxy.

“Are you okay?” she asks for him and he nods, smiling. Hesitantly she leans up to meet him again, and this time they’re less frantic, less desperate to close the distance. He’s smiling when she finds him.

(So is she.)

In the quiet thereafter, they fall asleep under the stars.

+

(“You owe me twenty credits,” Draven tells Mothma after the next Council meeting. “You had another year on the clock.”

The senator manages to retain her republican poise as she says, “But you have to give them both the protocol on being in both a professional and intimate relationship. Have a good day.”)

+

Some things change.

“I think it’s sweet,” Antilles says at breakfast one morning and Cassian, who as far as Jyn knows has never once shown a tell in a professional capacity, colors just a little around his ears.

“I’d like to know how everyone knows,” she grumbles before everyone looks up at Kay, hovering as usual over Cassian. _Oh_.

Other things just work differently.

Jyn already knows how Cassian fights, and how to follow his cues when a job is going south. She trusts him to do the same with her, and she doesn’t wonder whether he’s covering her as his mission partner or as something else. Something more. It all comes down to the same thing.

_Trust goes both ways._

(But when they’re alone – some things are much, much better.)

It doesn’t solve all the problems in the galaxy. They’re still on the run half the time, on high alert for their lives, half-starving and exhausted and somehow still standing. There is nothing romantic about the hollows under Cassian’s eyes, or how they both look years beyond their age, or how the strain of their work doesn’t fit into simple moral buckets. She was young, when Saw left her, but he trained her well, and the strain shows on her less. Cassian carries it every step of the way.

But some things really are better. She can fall asleep next to him, listening to the steady beat of his heart and know that despite all the hell they have left to walk through, he’s still walking with her. She wakes next to him, curled together in a protective shell she’d never imagined before. She still jumps at his touch, joy and electricity curled all in one, and it curls at the edges of her dreams. She holds his hand while reading a data pad, and the anxiety she’s lived with all her life edges a little further back.

(She looks at him, and the words fill her mouth, and she puts them into touch instead.)

But some things don’t change. Some things grow, and burn, and her father sends a message out across the stars.

+

“Sergeant Erso,” Draven says, having pulled her into an urgent briefing without warning, “we need you to make contact with Saw Gerrera.”

She doesn’t fall out of her chair, but it’s a close thing. She also _doesn’t_ miss the unhappy, angry look Cassian shoots Draven, and the worried look he shoots her right after.

“Did you know?” she asks afterwards, on the way to grab their ready packs. “Did you know my father made contact?”

“It was a lead,” he says, keeping pace with her more easily than she’d like. She’d like to outrun him, hide away someplace he can’t find her, if only for the next five minutes. “I didn’t want to tell you like that. I told Draven – ”

“Okay,” she bites, slamming the door to her quarters shut again, hoisting her pack over her shoulder. “Okay.”

It doesn’t feel like there’s anything else to say. It’s more the promise of betrayal, a cycle repeated upon her since she was a child. He was just doing his job, and it’s just – it’s another mission for her. A mission that revolves around her lost fathers like some cheap holonovel. It feels more like an old wound than anything else; a wound that didn’t quite heal right. Trust – and betrayal – and not from her father, and not from Saw. It leaves a sinking feeling in her gut as they take off; just the two of them and K-2, Draven watching from below.

(In another life – )

+

They doze fitfully on the way to Jedha, but when they land, the rhythm of old missions takes over, and she almost smiles at Kay’s complaining – until he mentions her father, and _well, fine, it’s going to be that kind of day_ , like so many other bad days.

“Maybe we should leave target practice behind,” she says to Cassian, exchanging a look that smoothes the last ruffles between them.

“Are you talking about me?” Kay asks and she rolls her eyes as Cassian answers affirmatively.

“I can blend in,” Kay insists. “I’m an Imperial droid. The city is under Imperial occupation.”

Usually, when they’d taken K-2 with them on a mission, it hadn’t been to an _occupied city_ , and Jyn tries to explain this to him with half her brain thinking about strategic entrances and exits from a walled mesa city. He agrees, begrudgingly, but only seems mollified by Cassian. Add that to the list.

Later – when the shooting starts – and only old reflexes and luck keep both her and Cassian alive – she’s glad he came anyway. Something about it feels like their last mission, like déjà vu and the road back all in one.

(Still, nothing compares to the homecoming she knows is waiting for her.)

+

His voice calls out to her through the caverns, hopeful and nostalgic and _older_ than she remembers him being. When her eyes adjust to the light, she almost can’t stop herself from taking a step back. Her mentor, her teacher, her substitute father – it seems that she’s barely come in time. She might not have come at all.

He’s not truly that old, but a soldier like her recognizes the thousand small deaths that age a man. She wears it; Cassian wears it; and Saw wears it most of all. It’s been a long time. Of all the voices she passed in the hallways down here, she didn’t recognize but one.

(A very long time.)

“Jyn?” he says, almost a whisper, and reaches out for her. “Is it really you? I can’t believe it.”

The guard removes her handcuffs and she steps back, deeper into shadow. She’d spent ten years not expecting to ever see her mentor again; she’d spent ten years burying his final instruction somewhere between her fists and her heart and a new cause made all her own.

“Must be quite a surprise,” she says. To her own ears, she sounds like a child.

“Are we not still friends?” he asks, surprise in his voice, and she wants to scream, she wants to bolt, but she’s here for the cause. She’s here for her family. She’s here for Cassian, locked in a cell somewhere, looking for a messenger.

“It’s been a long time,” she says. “The last time I saw you, you were flying away from me as fast as you could get. You _left_ me.”

“I knew you were safe,” he answers, and she hears the confusion in his voice. He hadn’t expected this, and to be honest, her resistance is crumbling. It’s not the cell on Onderon, the fighters aren’t her dead childhood friends, but hell’s teeth _it’s home_. It’s more home than Yavin IV had ever been in all ways but one.

“You left me behind,” she repeats and his eyes flicker.

“You were a child,” he says, even quieter, and her throat tightens. “I was protecting you.”

“You dumped me,” she protests, but she’s stepped out of the shadows, closer. He’d told her not to trust anybody. She’d never truly believed that included him, not even now. It’s an old wound.

(The memory of a wound, from another lifetime.)

“Not a day goes by that I don’t think of you,” he says, and takes an unsteady breath from his ventilator. “But you were the daughter of an Imperial science officer. People – people wanted to use you as a hostage. I knew Mon Mothma wouldn’t.”

A long quiet stretches between them, and she knows the truth in his words. There is truth in betrayal, and betrayal in good intentions, and she knows the distance of them both.

“The Alliance wants my father,” she says, and delivers her message.

(She receives one in return.)

+

The steps forward seem familiar and worn. She doesn’t know if it’s horror or recognition in her eyes when she sees the Death Star above Jedha, a brief glimpse before hyperspace closes over their tiny ship. It seems especially tiny now, past the wreckage of a holy city and countless lives.

 _Her father’s message_.

They follow the steps to Eadu, and this time Cassian does not go up a hill with his sniper rifle.

(She can’t imagine why he would.)

Instead, he covers her ascent from below, comes for her in the midst of rebel fire, and her father is dead. Her fathers are both dead, and Cassian has not betrayed her, but the Council does.

The steps lead all the way back to Scarif, up a tower, and then to a beach.

“Your father would be proud of you, Jyn,” Cassian says, looking at her and not the storm.

(He doesn’t specify which one.)

She clasps his hand and lifts them up, one last stand. Somehow, in this moment, she's grateful more than anything - as if they've had more than they know. He wraps her in his arms for the last time and she exhales, shaky, watching the storm race closer.

 _Thank you_ , she thinks, her crystal pressed safely between them.  _Thank you_ - 

(soon – the Force carries them, and binds them –

+

and takes them back to the start).


End file.
